Our money for attack ads â€“ how low can the Harper Conservatives go?

Just when you thought the Harper Conservatives could stoop no lower with their attack ads against Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, they discovered something even more base.

Household mailings, paid for by taxpayers, are supposed to communicate information from MPs to constituents about doings in government. Every MP, of course, puts her or his spin on things because, after all, theyâ€™re politicians. But household mailings often contain straightforward information about which government office a constituent should phone, how to apply for government programs, or what this or that piece of legislation means.

But now the Conservatives have decided to use these mailings â€“ as much as 10 per cent of the voters receive them at any one time â€“ as nothing more than a printed negative ad against Mr. Trudeau. Itâ€™s one thing for the Conservative Party to use its money to buy television airtime to demean Mr. Trudeau; itâ€™s another to use your money for the same base purposes. But as we see, the Harper attack machine does politics this way, always has and always will, because the Prime Minister â€“ who authorizes all this stuff, after all â€“ obviously thinks it works.

It’s never the big things that trip up governments, it is stuff like this. Â Voters aren’t stupid, we know this stuff is being paid for by taxpayers and it starts to add up. Â Bev Oda’s orange juice, these ten percenters, a defence minister taking helicopter rides so he can fishâ€¦ It’s not a partisan thing. Â It’s the transition a government that is going from serving to being entitled. Â

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This is a weblog about urban issues, technology, & culture published by Jordon Cooper since 2001. You can read about me and the site here and if you are looking for one of my columns in The StarPhoenix, you can find them here.